Garden bench - need some advice to make it more rigid, and a legs question

[Rollerball]

I've had a garden bench like the following for a few years:

Simply Wood Churchill 3 Seater Garden Bench

Simply Wood Churchill 3 Seater Wooden Garden Bench – New for 2025 RRP £299.99 – Offer price £224.99! This stunning bench from Simply Wood has been newly remodelled for 2025. The Churchill 3 Seater Bench is an all round, sturdy and extremely comfortable heavy duty outdoor seat for two. The...

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My problem is that it's become less rigid of late in the horizontal plane (so it moves side to side a bit too much) - I tightened the nuts and bolts but they started sinking too far into the wood, so I added some big stainless steel washers and re-tightened the nuts - this helped a bit but it's still not as solid as I'd like. What would be the best way to brace it?

Also, still with the same bench - because it sits on tarmac the ends of the legs are starting to rot and crumble a bit. Bearing in mind that the legs are at a bit of an angle, are there any kind of covers/'boots' that I can put on the ends of the legs? All I can find are some for vertical legs.

 

[Old Salt]

Dismantle it and then reassemble with your larger washers and waterproof wood glue where the timbers join.

Stand the ends of the legs in a container with some timber preservative for 24/48 hours so that it soaks up into the legs.

 

[foxhole]

You could give it decking feet , short piece of decking run back to front under legs to keep the feet off the grounded.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Also, still with the same bench - because it sits on tarmac the ends of the legs are starting to rot and crumble a bit. Bearing in mind that the legs are at a bit of an angle, are there any kind of covers/'boots' that I can put on the ends of the legs?

Cut the damaged leg ends off, drill vertical holes up into the cut ends, and install a large bolt with a head. Drill the holes, so that the bolt threads are a reasonably tight fit. Finally, find a pot, wide enough for one leg at a time to sit in, top the pot up with preservative, and leave each leg to soak fo. r a couple or so days. The bolt heads, will raise the leg ends, up away from the damp ground.

To stabilise it horizontally - get hold of some 1" x 1/8" steel, better galvanised. Bolt it as an inverted V, from each rear leg near the bottom, up to the reinforcement timber, under the middle of the seat. The inverted V, might work better, as two sections of steel, bolted back to back, in the centre.